


A Fleeting Glimpse

by JuweWright



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Post-Hogwarts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-23
Updated: 2016-07-23
Packaged: 2018-07-26 06:01:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7563055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JuweWright/pseuds/JuweWright
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hermione has been called to Draco Malfoy's cottage to have a look at a cursed book.</p>
<p>One Shot</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Fleeting Glimpse

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LadiePhoenix007](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadiePhoenix007/gifts).



> This story is a get well gift for Ladie Phoenix from the Dramione Facebook Group

A Fleeting Glimpse

A cold wind was blowing through the dimly lit streets of Coventry as Hermione Granger got out of the railway station. Harry and Ron always made fun of her still using Muggle transportation, but she found that taking the train gave her time to think, time to relax, time to breathe. She needed these few hours away from the world from time to time. Usually she took a book with her. She had never been a big fiction reader, had only recently discovered the bliss of leaving reality behind and be completely drawn in by a story. 

She quickly closed the buttons on her coat and wrapped her scarf around her neck. It was only a brisk walk to the Cottage, but the autumn cold was piercing. There was no reason to catch a cold over Draco Malfoy being in trouble. There was no reason to feel smug about it. She still did. The former Slytherin boy had been caught buying a couple of artefacts he should rather have left alone. There was nothing evil about Draco these days. If you were honest, there had never been. He’d only been a boy raised in the wrong circles. The punishment for his foolishness had been worse than anything he’d ever done. Shunned by most people, he lived a very secluded life now. Of course, he still had his friends. Blaise, Theo and Pansy could be a very sophisticated pain in the ass if they decided to host a fundraiser and show off their inherited wealth once again. But Draco alone wasn’t that bad. They had gone for coffee a couple of times when he had been in London. One day, he had walked into the bookshop café, superficially unaware of who the owner was. Later, he had admitted that he had sought her out, had needed to know whether she’d even allow him to be in her presence. She had been surprised by how well she had actually coped with seeing him again. After all, he had been just standing there while his aunt tortured her in Malfoy Manor.

It was a topic they never breached. They had started to talk about books, then about the old days, avoiding the war and anything linked to it, but getting into great detail when recalling the feasts, the fun, the great teachers and the bad ones. They had actually spent a full afternoon once discussing the preposterous Gilderoy Lockhart picking out the cheesiest and most boisterous lines from his books. They could laugh together. And Hermione was pretty happy that she did not work for the Ministry but had only been called hither as a specialist in cursed books. After one of Draco’s newest acquisitions had almost cost Seamus Finnegan two fingers of his left hand, they had found it necessary to call her. 

“Ah, there you are,” Draco said, opening the door before she’d even touched the doorbell. 

She wasn’t surprised. Draco would never leave his house unguarded. There were too many people who got wild ideas about what to do to a former Death Eater once they had had a few drinks. 

“So what mess did you get yourself in this time?” she asked, smiling.

He shrugged.

“Seriously. If I was anyone else, they’d not even care whether I had a flesh-eating lawn-mower in my garden shed. Did you know Arthur Weasley has one?”

“Awww. Poor ickle Draco,” she teased. “I know, the world is cruel, but why do you still dabble with dark arts when you know they are monitoring your every move.”

A gleam appeared in the man’s grey eyes, a glint. It made him look ten years younger. For a split second he was a fifteen year old boy again. He lowered his voice until it was barely a whisper.

“You know it’s not about the dark arts, Granger. It’s not about the artefacts. All of these deals… it’s only about getting away with the crime. It’s getting away with it despite being monitored. It’s about outsmarting the Ministry morons and avoiding their traps.”

She couldn’t help but grin. She knew Draco well enough to know that he was telling the truth. His interest in dark arts was limited to understanding them to the extent where he could work against them. She wondered whether the Ministry did not want to see it or whether they were just blind. Draco had been a healer at St Mungo’s for five years now. He’d fought curses and charms and had developed antidotes against the worst kinds of poison anyone could brew without melting their kettle. He was one of the good guys even though he harboured a fondness for dark alleys and shady pubs at midnight.

“So, I was told someone was having some fun with a biting book?” she enquired.

Draco nodded and helped her out of her coat.

“It was part of the deal with that Irish guy I met in Knockturn Alley yesterday. There are worse things in the pile, but that book is kind of nasty.”

“Did you try stroking its back?” Hermione asked, remembering their first lesson with Hagrid.

Draco laughed and held up a hand. A bandage was wrapped around what looked like a really nasty bite. The blood and gore was already oozing through.

“I actually did. It doesn’t like it.”

“Shame,” Hermione said following him inside.

Draco’s Cottage was the complete opposite of Malfoy Manor. 

The Manor had been grand and wide and cold. There had been grey stone walls, wall carpets and huge oil paintings of deceased ancestors. Hermione’s memories might have been slightly tainted by the fact that it had been the place where she had been tortured by a madwoman, but she believed herself capable of keeping fact and fiction apart. Malfoy Manor had been about aloofness and grandeur. It had been decorated for show and splendour rather than for actual occupation by humans. 

Draco’s place was comfortable and warm. The rooms were small and they were filled – but not crammed – with an assortment of different plush chairs, old wooden shelves and cupboards. When Hermione had first set foot over the threshold, she’d not been able to hide her surprise. She had expected Draco to live in a stylish black and white soulless tomb and she was happy to have been so wrong about it. 

She blushed slightly when she remembered that first time she’d come here. After a long day in the shop he had come round to take her out to dinner. They had been so caught up in their conversation that they had walked straight into a group of good-for-nothing street-urchins. Usually they wouldn’t have been a problem for the brightest witch of her age and pretty much the smartest guy she knew. But as it were the kids and teens had been trained by someone who knew how to fight and there had been many of them. At least a dozen. At some point, Hermione had not ducked a “stupefy” quickly enough and had been thrown back against a stone pillar. Although she had insisted that everything was okay and she was fine and no, she did not have a concussion, she only had a nasty head-ache and she wanted to go home, Draco had forced her to accompany him home. He had given her the choice between his sofa and a bed in St Mungo’s and as she did not want a fuss to be made and headlines to appear in the Prophet about one of the Golden Trio ending up in hospital, she had chosen the sofa.

Someone screamed from the living room. Draco flinched.

“That should have been the necklace. I told them to leave it alone.”

Hermione raised a brow.

“What did your mummy tell you about cursed necklaces?”

“That they are useful things indeed if you use them at the right moment on the right person,” Draco grinned. 

“It’s not exactly cursed. Not like the one…” he trailed off.

“It’s got a spell on it that makes it heat up any time somebody touches it. It’s like touching a red-hot iron. And I told them not to do it. I am not to blame for the stupidity of Dean Thomas. I never was and I never will be.”

Hermione chuckled. Of course, the possession of a cursed necklace was no triviality and one day Draco would end up in jail over these dangerous escapades. Where other people got away with a warning, he usually ended up in court. So why did he still walk the line between what was right and proper and what was outright criminal? She guessed it was his way of defying his fate. His way of saying he would not bend his back. It was his kind of game. She was just afraid he was losing.

Draco strode into his living room and raised a brow.

“So, Mr Thomas. Why exactly did you not follow my advice? As it happens, there's a healer at hand so you won't have to suffer terribly from the burns. I am going to get the salve from my stocks. Could you please show Miss Granger over to the book while I am gone.”

It turned out the book was quite extraordinary. Hermione tried a few charms on it to find out what kind of curse caused it to bite every hand that tried to touch it.

“I will have to do more research on this,” she concluded after two hours straight. “This is a nasty piece of magic.”

By that time, the Ministry officials had left and she was in terrible need of a cup of tea. Draco seemed to have known, because the moment she let herself sink into one of the huge arm chairs in front of the fire place – after having placed the book in a sealed container which she would later take home to examine the artefact further – he came in with a tray in his hands and set it down on the tiny side table. It was kind of odd to see him do something like this. In Malfoy Manor, house elves had done all the household chores. 

“I put milk in it. No sugar,” Draco stated with a shrug. “I was not one hundred percent sure whether I remembered correctly that this was how you like your tea but I thought I'd take the chance.”

Hermione took a sip from the tiny gold-rimmed cup – which made her think about old aunts and crocheting – and looked up with a smile.

“It's perfect. Thank you. I didn't even check what time it is.”

“Past Midnight,” Draco provided, sitting down on the sofa. 

A fat cat strolled in and jumped onto his lap. It was huge, grey and awesome. Hermione had met the tom before and loved him dearly. As the pet lay purring on Draco's lap, she thought how weird it was to be here and to feel – at ease.

“Oh Great. That means, I'll have to floo back. Or apparate,” she sighed. She hated apparition. It always made her feel queasy.

“You could...,” Draco started and checked himself, shaking his head.

“What?”

He looked her straight in the eye. His features had become stronger over the years. His hair was still blond, but his nose had developed the slight characteristic hook that Lucius had also sported. His cheeks and chin showed traces of stubble. After all, it had been a long day. Hermione noticed he was wearing black Jeans and a dark grey shirt. For a while after the war, he had tried wearing coloured clothes, but his wardrobe had inevitably returned back to his old black, white and grey although it had become more fashionable.

“You could just stay here. I mean. It's late. You already approved of the sofa when you were delirious from the concussion...”

“I did not have a concussion.”

“You had a concussion, Granger. Believe me. Either you had a concussion or you were drunk or both.”

“What makes you so sure of that.”

He sighed and let his head sink into his hands.

“If you stop asking questions now, it would be better for both of us.”

“Draco!”

He stood up and walked over to the window, glancing into the dark front yard of the Cottage. The grey cat, annoyed that it had been dumped, walked over to Hermione's chair and meowed, demanding to be stroked.

“Okay, fine. You want to know why I am one hundred percent sure you had a concussion after that incident?”

Draco turned around. There was a deep frown on his forehead and pain in his eyes.

“I am sure you had a concussion, because you said you loved me, Granger. And you would never have done that if you had had your wits together.”

She stared at him. 

It had been late – or early, depending on how you took it – when they had arrived at the cottage. Draco had insisted on travelling the old fashioned way because both floo-ing and apparating usually made Hermione dizzy and he did not want her to throw up. He had tended their injuries and made her lie down on the sofa after drinking a potion he'd taken from his stocks. Afterwards he had just sat in the arm chair next to her, keeping watch. She had been on the verge of sleep when it appeared to her that she had never felt safer then in this moment. The realization had struck her hard and she remembered thinking the words – but had she said them? 

One look at Draco how he stood in front of the window, defiant, ready to fight back the moment she started to either laugh at him or tell him off for saying something stupid, made it clear.

She sat the cup down and stood up, walked over to him and put her hands on his shoulders. The man was tense, ready to run. There wasn't much good in this world for former Death Eaters.

She smiled.

“I didn't know I actually said that out loud”, she admitted. 

He frowned even more.

“Granger, this is the point where you have to deny vehemently that you have feelings for me and afterwards send me out of this room so you can sleep on the sofa or jump into the fireplace to go home. Because if you don't do this quickly and take at least three steps back immediately, I am going to kiss you. I have wanted to kiss you for ages. I don't even know for how long. It's just... I know this can't happen. But sometimes I look at you and how you seem to be completely okay with being around me and talking to me and having conversations with me. You don't even flinch from my touch although you'd have every right to. I love you not only because you are clever and smart and amazing and beautiful but because you make me feel human. As if I belong somewhere in this world. It's like catching a fleeting glimpse into a parallel universe and I want to keep catching these glimpses. So, please, step back now, because if you don't I will kiss you and ruin everything and you'll run off and ...”

She put her hand on his lips and he stopped talking.

“Kiss me!” she demanded. “I am not going anywhere.”

 

THE END

 

 


End file.
